ALBANY — The chief enforcement counsel for the state Board of Elections wrote a searing letter to the board accusing its partisan members of attempting to hobble her investigative authority with new rules that she said would diminish her ability to do the job.

The new rules, scheduled to be voted on by the board in the coming weeks, would allow the commissioners to tightly control the subpoena powers of Risa Sugarman, the independent enforcement counsel.

In 2014, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders announced with great fanfare their creation of the independent enforcement unit at the Board of Elections.

In a press release that year, Cuomo and then-Senate Majority Coalition leaders Dean Skelos and Jeff Klein, along with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, characterized the Board of Elections as "ineffective" and said its partisan structure "leads to gridlock and rarely produces any serious investigations of election law violations."

The following year, Skelos and Silver were separately indicted on federal corruption charges. Sugarman has battled with the Board of Elections as its leaders — two Democrats and two Republicans — have arguably tried to whittle away at her independent authority.

In Friday's 14-page letter opposing the rule changes, she said her investigations should remain "confidential, non-partisan and free from political influence."

"In passing the Public Trust Act in 2014, the legislature made clear its intention to create an independent chief enforcement counsel at the SBOE to conduct investigations," Sugarman wrote. "Since then, no new laws have been enacted that would permit a return to the type of partisan Board control of investigations that would be imposed by these new rules. The proposed rules change the effect of existing law, which the Board has no power to do."

The shortfalls of the Board of Elections were highlighted by the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption, which Cuomo abruptly shut down in March 2014 amid allegations that his office had meddled in its work. Cuomo later responded by touting the creation of the elections' enforcement counsel.

But legislative leaders and Cuomo have remained largely silent on the battle at the Board of Elections that Sugarman said is a politically motivated attempt to rein her investigations.

"These amendments would allow the politically partisan commissioners of the SBOE to impose their own political will on the independent chief enforcement counsel's investigations," she wrote. "Such political interference and control creates new legislation beyond the authority of the board and violates the clear statutory mandate that the chief enforcement counsel have sole authority to conduct investigations necessary to enforce the Election Law."

The commissioners have said their proposals would give them information to "make an informed decision" about the use of Sugarman's subpoena powers. But Sugarman said the rules go far beyond that.

"The process of conducting investigations is precisely what the Legislature intended to prevent the commissioners from supervising," Sugarman wrote. "By controlling the chief enforcement counsel's investigations on a subpoena-by-subpoena basis, the commissioners effectively control the nature, course, and scope of those investigations."

The board already has power over whether Sugarman can issue subpoenas in a specific probe. Under the proposed regulations, to issue a subpoena her office would have to provide a memorandum to the board's commissioners explaining the circumstances of an investigation and copies of any proposed subpoenas.

Cuomo's office declined to say whether they would try to intervene in the dispute.

“We support effective enforcement of the election laws and don’t want to see anything that impedes that important work," said Tyrone Stevens, a spokesman for Cuomo.